PESHAWAR, Sept 18: A two-member bench of the Peshawar High Court on Tuesday acquitted an African woman and set aside her conviction awarded by a judge of the anti-narcotics court.

The bench, comprising Justice Tariq Pervaiz and Justice Shahjehan Khan, accepted the woman’s appeal and directed the authorities concern that the woman should be released from prison.

The appellant, Mrs Hadija Nujeedatou, a citizen of Mali, was arrested at Peshawar Airport on Sept 14, 2001, by the Anti-Narcotics Force, which claimed the recovery of 2kg of heroin from her luggage. She was convicted on July 11, and sentenced to seven years imprisonment with a fine of Rs200,000.

Advocate Sadia Siddiqui appeared for the appellant and contended that it was a concocted and engineered case and nothing was recovered from the appellant. She argued that according to the ANF the said contraband was recovered from her luggage after three days of her arrest. She added that initially nothing was recovered from her luggage.

Ms Siddiqui stated that the appellant was kept in a hospital for three days as the ANF suspected presence of narcotics in her stomach, but they failed to recover anything. She added that after the failure, the ANF announced the recovery of narcotics from her luggage. She said the delay of three days in the recovery of the narcotics proved the malicious intentions of the recovering agency towards the appellant.